Here’s what we know: Last year, historians Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie published a book called Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute. Among other topics, the book contained this shocking paragraph:

“Hitler himself is believed to have had two forms of genital abnormality: an undescended testicle and a rare condition called penile hypospadias in which the urethra opens on the under side of the penis.”

The Telegraph cited the news this week, and the Internet went crazy. The online headlines jumped to weird conclusions like “Hitler had a micropenis” and “Historians: Hitler’s Manhood Was Small, Deformed.”

It’s a salacious historical fun fact. But the problem is, there’s not much evidence (i.e. no evidence) to support any of it.

But the Soviets, who claimed to have done an autopsy on Hitler’s remains after the fall of Berlin, insisted that his left testicle was MIA.

But that was (kinda) contradicted by Dr. Josef Steiner Brin, the prison medical officer who examined Hitler in 1923 after a failed coup, and found that the future despot had “right-sided cryptorchidism,” which means the ball on his right side was hiding inside his body like a nervous hamster.

Hitler’s Birth Defect

While allegations of Hitler’s hypospadias are a little more recent, they’re just as unsubstantiated. And considerably more misunderstood.

For one thing, hypospadias is hardly “rare,” says Brian Steixner, M.D., Director of the Institute of Men’s Health at Jersey Urology Group in Atlantic City. “It occurs in about one percent of male births. That means one in a hundred guys is going to have this issue.”

What’s more, hypospadias is not the same thing as a micropenis, nor does one thing cause another.

Hypospadias, says Dr. Steixner, describes a condition in which “The hole at the tip of the penis, which is the meatus, is in a non-anatomically correct position. Basically, the hole at the tip of the penis is in the wrong spot.”

There are mild cases, in which the hole “is a centimeter or two away from where it should be,” Dr, Steixner says. And then there are more severe forms of hypospadias, in which a guy might be pissing out of his scrotum.

“If you were 10 feet away from the penis of somebody with a hypospadias and it was non-erect, you could not tell the difference,” Dr. Steixner says.

“But if you were to get close up to Hitler’s penis, and you were to look on the underside of it, it would be very clear to you that the hole that he urinates and ejaculates out of is not in the right spot.”

And that, in a nutshell, is why the Internet is full of Hitler penis stories in 2016. Nobody in Germany bothered to get a good sightline of the Führer’s penis.

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